With the barrage of rapid-fire news headlines every single day, it’s easy to forget we’re all made of star stuff. 2014’s Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the reboot of 1980’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage funded and supported in large part by Seth MacFarlane, became the most-watched science television show in history. Now, six years in the making, we’ve got a sequel. Again the creation of executive producer, director, and writer Ann Druyan, widow of Carl Sagan, the new Cosmos: Possible Worlds continues Sagan’s legacy and ventures forth into new themes of exploration and discovery.
Premiering Monday, March 9 on National Geographic, Cosmos: Possible Worlds features a wide variety of reenactments, animation, holograms, and set locations around the world. The new 13-episode series tells stories of seemingly obscure scientists that changed the course of history. Intimate and impossibly grand at the same time, this stunning new series is must-watch television for anyone with even a passing interest in science.
In Cosmos: Possible Worlds, host Neil deGrasse Tyson takes us on a new journey, this time with the goal of exploring the universe for other worlds and forms of life, and in the process understanding better how we came to be on our own. The stories take the viewer through such wonders as how bees communicate, how rockets were invented, and how we’ve learned so much about our own solar system and other worlds, only to end up with new questions for current and future generations of scientists to explore.
A flashback to an alien planet in the Milky Way 11 billion years ago, as host Neil deGrasse Tyson witnesses stars being born. Credit: Cosmos Studios
Each episode is full of lovingly crafted vignettes that better fit the commercial television format over the original’s straight hour-long duration on PBS. The ever-charming and accessible Tyson brings you along with him throughout, and his enthusiasm, as always, is palpable and contagious. Alan Silvestri’s musical score swells at exactly the right moments to signal the drama, the discoveries, and the heartbreak of obstacles and setbacks inherent to advancement–and the eternal fight against those that resist science and reason.
As with the two prior series, Cosmos: Possible Worlds succeeds in inspiring us, particularly in a time of seemingly intractable anti-science forces. Druyan and Tyson show that the way ahead is still full of light—and star stuff.
Now read:
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